Gizmodo Editor's Tech Gear Seized

[Rob Williams]

Unless you were truly living under a rock last week, chances are great that you've at least heard of the iPhone 4G, and possibly even the huge scandal that's been surrounding it. Things all began when Gizmodo acquired a prototype of the phone (paying $5,000 for it) and then posted a thorough look at the hardware, inside and out. All the while, Apple kept pretty quiet.

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You can read the rest of our post here.

 

[Kougar]

Jesus.... I briefly heard that they had gotten their hands on a model, but other sites such as Ars and others came away thinking Apple arranged the entire meeting/leak... nobody mentioned Gizmondo paid $5,000 for the thing.

It's one thing for someone to show off the phone covertly in a bar, one wouldn't know if it was an officially sanctioned or orchestrated leak or just an employee eager to show off their employer's next big thing because they are enthusiastic about the technology. But it is entirely different to pay $5,000 for an early prototype that is known to be unreleased, under NDA, and known illegally obtained. Saying they had no idea it was illegally obtained is silly, how could they NOT know. Reporting on tech is their business, they know how the business of NDAs and prototypes work. If they really paid $5k for the thing then they did break laws.

The raid on his house and seizure of his equipment just goes to show Apple hasn't changed anything regarding their policies on industrial espionage even after an employee ended up committing suicide over a iPhone lost in shipping. If the news got wind of Microsoft pulling something like this there would be a huge uproar... but it won't happen with Apple.

 

[looisboo]

Apple is really crazy man. Some people were saying this is just a publicity stunt lol, but hey gizmodo is more famous now

 

[Rob Williams]

Jesus.... I briefly heard that they had gotten their hands on a model, but other sites such as Ars and others came away thinking Apple arranged the entire meeting/leak... nobody mentioned Gizmondo paid $5,000 for the thing.

Here's another example of how hardcore Apple is, straight from Steve Wozniak:

"But I can tell you that the test engineer who showed me an iPad after midnight, for 2 minutes, during the iPad launch was indeed fired. I opted to spend 2 minutes with Numbers on this iPad, trying some stunts I'd seen on Apple's website demo video. I was not told that it was a 3G model and I had no way to know that. I was told that this engineer had to wait until midnight to show it outside of Apple's secure area. And I'm an Apple employee who he was showing it to. My guess is that he was allowed to take the iPad outside of the secure area but still not supposed to show it."

http://gizmodo.com/5523673/steve-wozniak-on-apple-security-employee-termination-and-gray-powell

And I agree, Gizmodo editor's are not stupid. If I was offered the iPhone 4G for cash and planned to post content about it, I'm not going to ignore the fact that there will be some sort of issue. This IS Apple we're talking about.

For Gawker though, this is GREAT publicity, good or bad. They may end up incurring legal fees in the end, but they also just received amazing exposure and potentially new readers. The initial article has had close to 9 million views to date... that's a LOT of reach.